Author: opinionstogo

Psychologist sees geopolitical lesson in attack

While America strikes back at terrorism and rallies around the notion of normalcy, there remains among many of us a disquieting sense of foreboding. What will the other shoe look like? Where will it drop? The scenarios are as varied as they are virulent.

Amid all the anxious conjecture, however, is a constant. Our lives will never be the same again. And that includes dealing with the knave new world of terrorism with our children. Their lives, of course, will never be the same again either.

Tampa psychologist Alan Lewis offers some observations and advice, some of which may surprise you. Lewis, a native New Yorker whose counseling experience ranges from anxiety-ridden, post-robbery bank tellers to traumatized paramedics and firefighters, suggests a combination of common sense and “critical learning experience” in helping our kids.

“The most important thing for parents to do is reassure their children that they’re safe,” advises Lewis. “For kids, their own safety is paramount. Reassure them that the people around them will keep them safe. Reassure them that what they’re going through is normal.”

He urges “circumspection” in front of children, which is what “parents should do anyway,” he adds. Ditto for monitoring the violence — whether in videos or in horrifically real newscasts — they are exposed to.

But Lewis also reminds parents that there is “nothing wrong with the opportunity to display emotions.

“Kids take their cues from their parents, whether they’re 9 or 19,” he points out. “It’s not inappropriate for kids to realize that this is important, and there is a sense of anger. Don’t try to be overprotective. Kids invariably understand more than we think. Just keep it on their level. And remember that grief is normal.

“You know, and this will sound funny coming from a psychologist, but ‘grief counseling’ almost implies that it’s abnormal and therefore requires a counselor,” notes Lewis. “What we have been going through — since the unthinkable occurred — is a normal process.”

Lewis also advocates using the terrorist attacks on America as a “launching pad” to talk about things we normally don’t discuss with our kids. For example: “This country needs to be defended.”

He draws a geopolitical parallel, which lends itself to a critical learning experience.

“Muslim kids, as we’ve seen, are indoctrinated at an early age,” says Lewis. “Maybe we need to remind our kids of what America is and what’s worth protecting.”

It’s zero-sum time for the U.S.

The U.S. is obviously in a zero-sum game with terrorists. The president has put every nation on notice that they are either “with us or with the terrorists.”

President Bush has been properly commended for his efforts at underscoring that America’s response to terrorist attacks are aimed at terrorists — not at Islam or Arabs. We don’t want a holy war, just a wholly justified military response to a despicable act of war perpetrated not by “warriors” but by craven agents of evil.

On the rhetoric front, we now need internationally respected Islamic clerics to step up and say what the president said — without qualification. In effect: “Those who pervert Islam through horrific murders and suicides deserve the harshest punishment and condemnation by Muslims.” And don’t stop saying it until this scourge has been vanquished.

America, however, only wins the war with evil if we are more committed to our cause — freedom and our way of life — than our enemies are to theirs, the destruction of same. To that end, it would be wise to remember:*How the Israelis took care of the Black September terrorists from the 1972 Munich Olympics. They painstakingly and methodically hunted them down and assassinated them. No headlines, no Muslimmania backlash. Of course, the sheer scope of the New York and Washington attacks and continued threats to the U.S. is far greater than what the Israelis faced, but the principle is the same. Not all of our commandos will be in fatigues.

*We are not the United-States-of-Hyphenated-America. We are Americans. Period.

*The critical issue with the media is not whether its members wear patriotic symbols, but that it remain mindful that in the global village, its broadcasts go everywhere.

*Never again should we refer to celebrity athletes as “heroes.”

*Should the Rev. Jesse Jackson ever make that mediation trip to Kabul, it must be with two provisos. His ticket is one-way and that he be accompanied in similar fashion by California Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of the House who didn’t vote in favor of giving use-of-force powers to President Bush.

*There’s a lot to criticize about our culture, but that’s our call. Those who treat their women as chattel, dress them as speed bumps and enjoy a good public beheading haven’t earned that right. No more than those who believe executing the innocent punches your ticket to paradise and guarantees a virgin lay-away plan.

*America is well served by adopting contemporary counterparts of WW II “victory gardens” and war-bond drives. That means not being intimidated out of our routines. Loving and counseling our families; looking after our neighbor; doing our jobs; showing the flag; making purchases; riding planes; enduring inconveniences.

It’s zero-sum time.

Reflections amid aftershocks: commitments to keep

President Bush is doing what he should in rallying the civilized world against terrorism. He’s assessing America’s full arsenal of carrots and sticks. Pakistan can attest to that. This is a zero-sum game and nobody draws a bye. The president effectively underscored that reality in his Thursday night speech to Congress, the American people — and the rest of the world.

While it was the U.S. that was specifically targeted on Sept. 11, all of humanity was attacked. More than 80 countries lost citizens; everyone lost a sense of civilization.

But while we ask others if they’re with us or with the terrorists, there is something else we must demand — and we must demand it of ourselves. We must be more committed to defending ourselves and our way of life than terrorists are to its destruction.

The ultimate mettle detector is in place. It already has yielded results; none more graphic than the heroism on daily display in New York. Not all are so noble.

When the House of Representatives approved the use of force by the president, the vote was 420-1. Normally that’s unheard of, de facto unanimity. Not so this time. How dare Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., vote against such a measure! Even if her Oakland constituency consisted of nothing but ethnic Afghani Quakers, Rep. Lee’s vote was an abomination. This was not the Gulf of Tonkin II; this was a morally justified, nationally necessary response to war, horrifically and despicably waged against America in our midst.

Nonetheless, the bipartisan vote was a strong signal to terrorists and civilized nations alike that as diverse as we are as a nation, we are united in our defense of ourselves and everything we value.

Now is a time for the media, which, on balance, has comported itself responsibly, professionally and even patriotically, to not yield to competitive instincts as America’s response plays out over these next weeks, months and years.

We need to know what’s going on and how we can help. We don’t, however, need to know, for instance, where Vice President Cheney is at a given time, what circuitous routes Air Force One takes out of obvious national security concerns or commando-deployment details.

More to the point, we Americans aren’t the only ones in the global village watching the network and cable news programming.

ABC anchor Peter Jennings, for one, has been a reassuring rock. And there have been others. Campbell Brown, an NBC White House reporter, however, was the antithesis with cheap-shot, smug speculation about President Bush not returning to Washington immediately after the terrorist attacks — and the implications for his “legacy.” It was beyond poor taste.

It’s now critical for Americans to finally see past the divisiveness that has long been the by-product of our politically correct infatuation with diversity and its resultant sense of separateness.

A hyphenated America, whether in the form of Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Disabled-Americans or Lesbian-Americans cannot be as united as it needs to be. Bring back the melting pot; hold the salad bowl.

And now is not the time for finger-pointing and scapegoating. Yes, coordination among the C.I.A., the I.N.S. and the F.B.I. would have been a good idea, and, yes, airplane and airport security could have been much better. We can fix that without rounds of recriminations.

We also need to walk that fine — but definable — line between the legitimate, prudent profiling of people at critical security links across this nation and hysterical, hateful behavior toward innocent American Muslims. Many of these people are here by choice, not just by the luck of birthright. The overwhelming majority are solid citizens with a profound sense of family and the highest regard for education and work ethic. They are loyal Americans who happen to look different. Their Islamic religion preaches peace. Its perversion is not their fault.

And speaking of religion, evangelical yahoos need to dismantle their moralizing and demoralizing pulpits that masquerade as bull horns of intolerance. Their fire-and-brimstone, “we-had-it-coming-because-of-loose-morals-and-gay-coupling” message must yield to those — across the spectrum of religious denominations — who can actually help America in its hour of need.

And we certainly don’t need to be lectured to about our corrupt culture by Islamic extremists and fatwa fanatics who treat women as chattel and mark their calendars for upcoming public beheadings.

No, America isn’t perfect, just perfectly vulnerable to the agents of evil. We may be too good for our own good. We’re going to change some things about America, and make it more secure, but we won’t change the essence of who we are and what we stand for.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it best. “We can change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or change the way they live. We choose the later.”

Amen.

God bless America.

U.S. response to terrorism: all options on the table

While the U.S. continues to bolt and reinforce the recently slammed-shut barn door of airline security and government surveillance, it must come to grips with the most pragmatic of realities regarding terrorism.

Are, as has been intimated by government officials, “all options” for dealing with terrorism on the table? And if so, we all know what that means. It means the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Hopefully that won’t be the case, for that unbottled genie is everybody’s nightmare. Prometheus unbound rescues no one.

The president, however, is certainly taking the right approach by trying to “rally the (civilized) world.” To date, we’ve received a lot of sympathy cards and rhetorical support from everybody but Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The time to put up is now.

Here, however, is a crucial element in any plan to lead a crusade-for-humanity against the forces of evil and their sponsors. We must have a universal definition of “terrorist.”

Try this one: “Anyone who targets innocents or treats them as mere collateral damage to advance a cause.”

Necessarily absent are attempts to value-judge “causes.” That goes for Chechnyan terror in the subways of Moscow or its counterparts in Belfast, Jerusalem, Beijing, Manila, Jakarta, Cairo, Bogota, Havana, New York or Washington. The greater good of civilization takes pragmatic priority over what is a truly “just” cause, even though we all know one when we see it.

But a car bomb that takes out civilians as a means to bringing down the Castro government is no less treacherous and condemnable than a suicide bomber in an Israeli disco. The only ideology that counts is agreement on the elimination of the scourge that is global terrorism.

Next time, we have to figure, it won’t be an airplane but a cruise liner, city bus or maybe anthrax in the water supply.

Then there is this — and it’s no less touchy than the matter of nuke use. Whatever we do in the way of a coordinated military, diplomatic and economic response to terrorists and those who harbor them is not a response to the root cause of evil acts of treachery and murder. Muslim fanatics, steeped in envy and enmity, hate what they see in us — as in unfettered secularism, hegemony, wealth, power and a crass and crude culture. We’ll do anything, they would submit, for money and oil.

But not enough to warrant the execution of our innocents.

That would take our inextricable role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the epicenter of those terrorist shock waves that have now reached continental America. At some point, and for obvious reasons it can’t be now, we need to ask if we have signed a suicide pact with Israel.

Asking that now, of course, is to invite denunciation as a capitulating, fair-weather friend who yields to intimidation.

The broaching of this subject, however, also needs to be on the table of options. This isn’t cut-and-run time. The state of Israel, a staunch ally, is not up for brokering.

What it arguably is, however, is time to evaluate our hermetically-sealed bond with Israel, including its powerful U.S. lobby, and the policies most inimical to Palestinians. Have we, or have we not, reached the point of bloody tit-for-tat in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza that renders “who started it” the mootest of points in an ever-escalating spiral of violence and virulence? From the Irgun and the Stern Group to suicide bombers, there’s enough blame to go around through more than a half century.

The British, like the French in Indo-China, managed to extricate themselves from Palestine two generations ago. The U.S. ought to at least consider deviating from the status quo — with or without the help of the United Nations, with or without the consent of Israel.

Bin Laden, done that? The price to be paid

I know you all know the feeling. The collective revulsion at watching the horrific events of Tuesday unfold with mouths agape and fists clenched. Waves of shock and anger. And a visceral, sickening sadness. And tears. And more anger. That outrageously obscene footage of Palestinians celebrating in the West Bank and Gaza. Celebrating the execution of thousands of innocent people. Beyond barbarity, beyond belief.

America’s response to a declaration of war on this country and our way of life, as we’ve heard President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell pledge, will be appropriate. As in, we trust, swift, sure and final. Not just, we assume, the symbolic lobbing of cruise missiles into some Afghani caves and tents.

We owe a proper military response, first and foremost, to ourselves. And to those who died — died doing their jobs in the world’s most productive economy — or died trying to save others. We also owe it to most of the rest of the world, who need us more than they know. This was a cowardly attack on civilization and humanity.

If we, as the planet’s lone super power, don’t do something, it won’t be done, and the forces of terrorism win by default. We didn’t win the Cold War only to falter against Muslim martyrs queuing up for paradise and a side order of virgins.

Here, then, is America’s World War III policy, though not in the calm calculation of State Department vernacular or the soaring rhetoric of a JFK inaugural speech: “If you aid, abet, plan or carry out terrorist acts against the U.S., you die.” Proscriptions against assassination don’t apply. These are military targets, as was Hitler in his bunker. To quote Joe Louis, who knew a thing or two about taking out someone, “He can run, but he can’t hide.” It went for Billy Conn; it goes for Osama bin Laden.

And for sovereign states: “If you harbor, you get hammered.” Don’t even try to hide behind some gauzy shield of geo-political piffle or self-serving, craven pap about Fundamentalist dynamics. You can have all-Allah-all-the-time and still not be enabling jihad junkies. We’ll help you, but you’re accountable. It’s not an option. No more than evil is an option.

And for airline passengers to, from and within the U.S., don’t even think of complaining about “profiling.” Sorry, but we have plenty of other places to celebrate diversity. And for minimum-wage, minimum-training, maximum-attitude security personnel, start looking elsewhere for employment. Your job will be federalized, professionalized and standardized.

Perspective, however, can be an early battle casualty. Pearl Harbor, for all its parallels and infamy, was war the old fashioned way. It was a lot easier to declare — and implement — war on an Empire. Bin Laden isn’t Tojo. And this just in: the United Nations sends a sympathy card and NATO says it stands with us. France has our back.

Cynicism, however, is a self-destructive vice in a time of national emergency.

It’s said that Israel is the only country that can’t afford to lose a war. It would cease to exist if it did. Well, the U.S. cannot afford to lose this one. It’s zero-sum time. Fortunately, we can rally the civilized world — and that’s still most of it — but only under two conditions.

First, we must agree on a universal definition of “terrorist.” Try “Anyone who targets innocents or treats them as mere collateral damage to advance a cause.” We can’t be value-judging causes — whether it’s Chechnyan terror in Moscow’s subways or its counterparts in Belfast, Jerusalem, Beijing, Manila, Jakarta, Cairo, Bogota, Havana or New York. The greater good takes pragmatic priority.

Second, we must be more committed to our cause than our enemies are to theirs. We, as Americans, need to jettison our heritage hyphens and defend freedom and the most productive nation in the history of the world. They, the despicable forces of evil, seek to destroy that. Ultimately, that’s a lost cause. And we can ensure it. See above.

God bless America.

Gary Condit’s prime time

So, after more than 100 days of saying nothing in public about his relationship with Chandra Levy, Gary Condit goes on ABC’s Prime Time with Connie Chung and proceeds to continue to say nothing. It was the verbal equivalent of silence, accompanied by a rhetorical nose thumbing to Ms. Levy, her family, the police, Condit’s constituents and anyone within earshot.

If the Modesto voters, out of stupidity or amorality, re-elect Condit after that performance, they deserve him. Moreover, they might then consider a vote on secession. He taints all of us.

He not only denied that he lied to Mrs. Levy over the nature of his relationship with her daughter, he attributed such an impression to her misunderstanding of what he told her. He even had the effrontery to use the Levy family as a shield to ward off Chung’s questions about his relationship with Ms. Levy by saying he was honoring their “specific request” that he spare everyone the truth.

For good measure, he labeled Anne Marie Smith, who says she is a former paramour, an opportunist looking for her “15 minutes of fame.”

As for that affidavit sent her requesting her written denial of a sexual relationship between them, that was not a suborning of anything — merely a bunch of lawyer-to-lawyer yada yada.

To this day, asserted Condit, he remains “puzzled” at how so many folks — from the Levys and Chandra’s Aunt Linda Zamsky to Smith and former aide Joleen McKay to the D.C. police — can get so many details wrong about how he has comported himself and what he has said.

It was an hour-long exercise in giving scoundrel a bad name. And for the first time in memory, it was the media who we were empathizing with — even in the person of someone married to Maury Povich.

As a public relations ploy, the interview was a disaster. Condit apologized for nothing, merely acknowledging that he was not exempt from the human condition, for he too had made “mistakes,” albeit unnamed, in his life.

Indeed.

It was quintessentially Clintonesque, chapter and verse. Remember Bill Clinton admitting to “60 Minutes” in 1992 that he surely had “caused pain” in his marriage. That was his “answer” to a question about his involvement with Gennifer Flowers.

Enough to make us all nostalgic for the credibility and candor of Ted Kennedy’s moving mea culpa over Chappaquiddick.

Is Tampa a victim of racial profiling?

Could it be that the Florida A&M-Bethune Cookman Florida Classic, formerly held in Tampa, has been replaced by the Punch Bowl?

Some would say so, including at least one “progressive” religious leader, who sees a continuum of racial slights and insults. Same racist game, but different visiting teams.

By now, we’re all too familiar with the recent incident, the anatomy of a rumor and the birth of an indignation, over at downtown Tampa’s Marriott Waterside Hotel.

A member of the predominately black Progressive National Baptist Convention saw a melanin-challenged Marriott staffer spit into a fruit punch bowl. Or maybe he took a sip. Or retrieved a ladle. Or dropped in a Baby Ruth bar for comic relief. Moreover, he then tainted a 1,000-person, sit-down meal of grilled salmon and filet mignon. Or not.

Whatever, by the time the general manager, who was not on site, could be summoned, the Rev. C. Mackey Daniels, head of the PNB convention, had issued marching orders. The group then walked out on the pricey repast. They marched to the nearest, next-biggest hotel, which mercifully wasn’t an Adam’s Mark. Presumably, they didn’t call ahead requesting a table with a viewpoint for 1,000. The downtown Hyatt Regency should be commended for scrambling to put out the mother of all chicken wing spreads.

The person, later identified as the Rev. Frederick Jones, who saw whatever it was that was to be seen at the Marriott is not talking. Except to PNB lawyers. Certainly not to anyone in Tampa, including the Marriott, the mayor, the media and the police. In fact, Jones checked out of his hotel early and left town.

The person, later identified as Istvan Kovacs, who was seen doing whatever it was that was done, says he merely retrieved a ladle, taking pains to avoid dipping any digits into the punch.

The truth is out there somewhere, but the staffer’s credibility is understandably — and likely irretrievably — undermined. Not only is he white, but he unfortunately hails from that hotbed of racial intolerance — Hungary.

Bigot-guilty until proven otherwise.

Only reinforcing the Napoleonic code was Paul Catoe, the untenably positioned president of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. “Until someone comes forward to prove to us something didn’t happen, we’ll assume it did,” Catoe told the St. Petersburg Times.

It’s come to this. City officials, including Mayor Dick Greco, apologizing for whatever, if anything, happened. And it’s incumbent upon the city to prove a negative. It’s not incumbent upon the PNB convention, however, to even help clarify the matter, except to its legal counsel.

Since the case for black victimization is so easy to make in politically correct America, including, some would contend, in racially retro Tampa, then it must be true. Whatever “it” is.

As a city, Tampa is racially profiled. Call it hosting while white. It’s based on incidents past, some legitimate and some not. It now feeds on itself.

For example, notice how the first Marriott media accounts also referenced the complaints of black Florida Classic visitors in 1994 who were angry that Tampa Bay Center, across from what was then Houlihan’s Stadium, closed early on game day.

The ensuing racial flap, which made the rounds again last year during the FAMU Law School site-selection charade, led to the game being moved to Orlando. What’s never mentioned in the media mantra is that TBC merchants welcomed the middle-class, middle-aged fans in town for reunions and shopping — but not the problematic onslaught of unaffiliated teenagers who historically flock to major “black events.”

Interesting that when the Rev. Daniels convened an ad hoc board meeting a couple of days after the Marriott incident, he presented a list of 20 racially charged incidents in Tampa’s past.

And it was current enough to include the racial discrimination lawsuit involving black women basketball players at the University of South Florida. He had no details about the damning allegations the PNB convention had made, but he had his show-and-tell Top 20.

His moral high ground was a sinkhole, but it didn’t matter. This is no more about M.L. King and Rosa Parks than Sean King and Bert Parks.

What seemed paramount to Rev. Daniels was leverage not enlightenment. For all of its civil rights lingo and the rhetoric of outrage and humiliation, The PNB Convention is after a financial settlement. Somebody will get stiffed because rumor-mongering must be a sacred calling.

The PNB Convention is playing the extortion game because it can. Tampa will be held hostage to further soiling of its reputation as a convention city unfriendly to blacks, whatever the merits of the Great Expectoration incident.

But give the Rev. Daniels credit for something. He is pursuing restitution, if not the truth, religiously.

The letter(s) of the law in Tampa

So now the court, or at least the one where Hillsborough County Judge Elvin Martinez holds forth, has thrown out Tampa’s lap-dance law as unconstitutional. Too broad. Public health or safety, said Martinez, are not at risk from lap dancing. Some marriages, perhaps, but that’s outside the ambit of the law.

For those scoring at home, that’s one out of four, because the other three county judges hearing lap-dance cases — which are alphabetically assigned — have ruled otherwise. Ultimately, of course, this unappealing issue is headed for appellate court.

For now, however, it means arrested patrons with last names beginning with the letters C, I, K, R and T, will be brought before Judge Martinez. Talk about the letter of the law.

Tampa Theatre gets twisted

Perhaps it’s generational, because I don’t get it. The way I didn’t get “The Blair Witch Project” or the way I don’t get Derek Washington’s art. Maybe I’m missing the “edgy” gene. But hopefully taste and standards are valid factors.

Anyway, I’m now talking about the recent, week-long “Spike and Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation” over at Tampa Theater.

Summarized St. Petersburg Times film critic (and “Blair Witch” apologist) Steve Persall: “Nothing is out of bounds, from physical deformities and child abuse to religious icons and unnatural sex. Graphic drawings of genitalia and body wastes and fluids are common threads

G-8 protestors should start rethinking strategy

Now that this year’s G-8 Summit is history — and the host city trashed — the usual postmortems have been rendered.

Lawlessness has been deplored, globalization has been defended and the plight of the world’s have nots has been denoted in the final communiqué. More Third World debt relief, for example, may be on the way — but it’s probably presumptuous to attribute that to the leverage of riotous behavior.

As for the 100,000 or so anarchists, idealists, union surrogates and unchaperoned, parentally subsidized Marxists, it’s time for them to collectively rethink strategies, priorities and summer vacations. Demonstrations of nastiness and naivete don’t win converts to a cause, unless the cause is chaos.

Getting some public relations help, although unconscionably bourgeoisie, would probably be worthwhile.

What do you do when you have a global forum? If you act like your city just won an NBA championship, who will that impress? The deportment department matters. The medium is still the message.

Bad messengers ill serve any cause, including a dissonant, anarchical one.

Here’s a better idea: Skip next year’s G-8 Summit in Canada. Pick another target, one that’s less amorphous than globalization, one where the moral high ground is yours to lose.

Then take on some causes that will earn you global respect from those that, well, matter most: the industrialized democracies. Instead of, say, WTO or G-8 road trips to Seattle or Genoa to decry sweatshops, how about sorties to Beijing, Khartoum, Freetown, Kabul or Pyongyang?

Rather than protesting globalization and thus incurring the very real risk of seeming clueless and chaotic again, why not start with human rights abuses by the world’s biggest bully? A Falun Gong Showing will play well in the West. And how about this year’s running total of 1,800 executions, many for political crimes and thievery? And don’t forget those summarily harvested organs of the executed. Meaty stuff. Great banners. Slogans to die for.

The only problem: Actually standing up to a police state, as opposed to a permissive democracy. The Chinese mean business and are more like the Red Brigades than the Genoan police.

In fact, word is that they are still pushing for the dissident toss as a demonstration sport in the 2008 Olympics. Protesting in Beijing for unequivocally noble causes that don’t require a modicum of economic sophistication should be a no brainer. Unfortunately it would mandate guts.

But it’s not as if Beijing is the only alternative. Credibility can also be built by disciplined protests in Sudan, where there’s a viable slave trade; Sierra Leone, where genocide is now a cultural more; Afghanistan, where the Taliban want to repeal civilization; and North Korea, where the government thinks starvation is an acceptable tradeoff for expensive weaponry.

Or perhaps the movement needs to think smaller — and for Americans, closer to home –before tackling any of the above, admittedly formidable, challenges.

It would, again, take some guts, but how about taking to the streets of Miami or Cincinnati? A principled protest against the Cuban embargo down Calle Ocho in Little Havana would earn widespread plaudits, as might a bold denunciation of the urban plague that is black-on-black crime in the city now ominously synonymous with “de-policing.”

There’s obviously no lack of critical issues and legitimate causes that need the world’s — and this country’s — immediate attention.

Summer in Canada on daddy’s credit card, however, will likely carry the day.

Oddfest at the Trop: thanks for sharing

Cultural kudos to both the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times for their in-depth coverage of the recent Ozzfest concert at Tropicana Field.

The Times, in particular, should be commended for devoting the lion’s share of a Monday Floridian section to a photo spread of the “ordinary people” behind the piercings and tattoos.

My personal favorite was the Melbourne mom-to-be who compared the “once in a lifetime” experiences of seeing Black Sabbath and having a baby. In that order.

Lucky kid-to-be.

Thanks again for sharing.

Wilson Alvarez: Rays’ retiring sort
At least it was a diversion from the hapless handling of the Fred McGriff soap opera. Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ officials were reportedly taken aback by some comments by Wilson Alvarez, the sore-armed, multi-millionaire pitcher on perpetual rehab assignment. Seems that Alvarez indicated that he just might walk away from his (otherwise) guaranteed $8-million 2002 salary and retire.

One question: If Alvarez were to retire, how could we tell?